Rope Burns
by DefendTheUndefended
Summary: Paulie and the other foreman werent just fighting for the Strawhats. They had another man there at Ennies Lobby. A man taken from his world, fallen in love, and blackmailed into a corrupt government if he is to keep the one he loves safe. When the strawhats start to feel hopeless, maybe they just need the number one protector to step up. Omegaverse-Ichigo/Paulie. (Summary may chang
1. 1) Use Somebody

1.) Use Somebody

Ok so a few things. Yes this is another Omegaverse but I like doing them so you can't really say jack about that... and if you weren't going to complain... then just ignore that plz...  
This is a Bleach/One Piece crossover with Ichigo and Paulie as the main characters. And it's also Ichigo/Paulie.. Paulie is an omega and Ichigo will either not have a designation or is an alpha. I haven't decided yet. I don't own Bleach or One Piece. Warnings. Well basically what goes with Omegaverse and these two anime's. Also this starts about a year or two before Luffy goes to Water 7 and in Bleach it's near the end of the Quincy war.

—(xXx)—

Rain pelted against the stone pavement harshly and wind howled as it raced between buildings, creating a chaotic symphony that sang of foreboding disasters. Of the incoming storm.

A lone man raced past the buildings, his eyes scanning the streets back and forth, searching for any stragglers who hadn't taken shelter against the approaching, yearly natural disaster, which had been appropriately named Aqua Laguna.

The man panted as he pushed his limbs to the limit, desperate to finish searching the streets before the looming storm unleashed its fury.

He shouldn't have been out here alone, but he was, and there was nothing he could do to change it. The mayor of the city had given him a mission to complete and that's what he was going to do.

Iceburg, the mayor and boss of the Galley-La Company, had reminded shipyard 1 that the duty of checking the streets had finally rotated back to them a few days ago, and the shipwrights had been raging to go, but then an accident occurred at the shipyard docks, and over half the foreman assigned for this rotation were injured and had already been evacuated to the shelter.

At that point it had been too late to assign another dock the duty so it fell to the ones who remained from the many who had been injured. There had been others running these streets checking, but he had told them to go on ahead to the shelter. Telling them to go and be with their families.

The man came to a stop for a moment. Catching his breath, he leaned slightly against the corner of a bakery, and wiped the rainwater out of his eyes. Running his hand through a head of blonde hair in a futile attempt to remove it from his face, Paulie, a Foreman of Dock 1, glanced down the next road he would have to check.

 _'After all it's not like I have someone waiting for me..'_

He froze, only two steps away from the bakery wall he had been leaning against, at a loud bang. The sound of the loudest cannon he had ever heard going off. Suddenly around him an intense light flared across the walls of the surrounding buildings and the stone pavement, his body casting a large shadow across the ground in front of him like a deformed death reaper.

He whirled around, his body suddenly breaking into a cold sweat. In the distant sky, what appeared to be a black substance swirled in the air, red and blue lightning sparked around the mass violently, lighting up the sky around it.

Something was thrown from the center of the daunting mass and the object, glowing with its own intensity arranged in an array of swilling black, white, and red, streaked threw the sky. The abnormality behind it suddenly shrinking into nothingness.

Paulie couldn't tear his eyes away as the object cut through the sky. His feet felt heavy and his eyes were wide. The glowing projectile passed overhead and he followed its track with his eyes.

He watched, unable to do anything, as it slammed into one of the buildings of the back roads. The building shattered at the impact. Rubble and debris being tossed into the air as if it had weighed nothing. A cloud of dust rose upward as the building folded into itself at the impact sight, and collapsed to the already slowly flooding ground.

Paulie stared for a moment. The logical part of him said to run, to go back to the shelter and bunker down for the night to wait out Aqua Laguna with the others... but.

And wasn't that usually his downfall, never listening to his own logical sense.

But _something_ told him he couldn't go back to the shelter and just sit around, and it wasn't because he had one more street to check either.

His feet were moving across the ground and towards the collapsed building before he made a conscious command, and he wanted to smack himself when he noticed.

Maybe he really _was_ impulsive.

But...

It felt like... whatever came out of that... whatever it was... wasn't just an object or something.

He knew - he _knew_ \- that any normal person would run the other direction, but for some reason he couldn't. What if that thing wasn't just an object? What if that thing was going to be dangerous for Water 7? What if that thing got washed away during Aqua Laguna? There was too many what if's and unanswered questions to go to the shelter with a clear conscious.

So he ran towards it.

As he jumped down into the final level of the back roads and the rising water level soaked up to the middle of his calf, a thought ran through his head. He _really_ hoped he wasn't going to regret this.


	2. 2) Get Off of My Back

2.) Get Off Of My Back

sorry it's short.

——(xXx)——

Paulie scratched the back of his head as he stared down in unsettled confusion.

He hadn't been wrong. The thing that came out of that... black mass.. wasn't just debris or something like that.

What had come out of that weird thing.. was a person.

He had practically tripped over the guy while looking in the rubble that had once been a cathedral.

He immediately had tired pulling the guy out, and had been started to find the guy covered in open wounds and soaked in his own blood. At that exact moment lightning had flashed overhead and his attention had shifted back to Aqua Laguna.

The storm was worse, he had quickly calculated whether he could make it back to the shelter in time with another person and he didn't like those chances.

So here they were. Paulie looked around in the house he had broken into. It was a little apartment with very little furniture or valuables, but it was adequately sealed up tight against Aqua Laguna, so it would have to do.

Paulie sighed and pushed back the wet hair sticking to his face as he looked back to the guy he had drug into the apartment with him, finally having a change to actually examine him.

His hair was bright orange and he was dressed in black oddly styled clothes and had a white torn cloth tied around his waist like a belt. All of his clothes were torn now that he looked. And each patch of uncovered skin, probably a good bit of covered skin as well, was oozing blood from nasty looking wounds.

Paulie started sweating in slight nervousness, unsure what to do. Those wounds looked bad and he was no doctor, the best he knew how to do was immediate first aid, and even that wasn't really good. He just knew enough to help someone if they got hurt at the shipyards until professional help arrived.

But... he had to do something..

He grunted and burst into a flurry of movement. Slamming cabinets open, and practically tearing the apartment apart looking for medical supplies.

He lucked out.

Swinging what appeared to be a pantry door open, he snatched the box with a medical symbol on its side and ran back to the couch he had deposited the man on.

The guy hadn't moved and Paulie wasn't sure if he should find that comforting or not.

He set the box on the floor as he kneeled beside the still form, his hands hovering, unsure of what to address first. His hand habitually came up to his mouth to remove his cigar only to find it missing, he briefly wondered when he had lost it, but decided it didn't matter just as quickly and grit his teeth.

He gingerly started to slide the other male's black clothing off his shoulders, grimacing at the wet sound the fabric made as it peeled away from the blood. The orange haired male groaned, which made Paulie freeze in his movements for a moment, as he slid the cloth down enough to have access to his chest but otherwise didn't move.

He gasped slightly as he stared at the wounds the man had covering his torso. His chest was an array of open wounds looking as if a cat had used him as a scratching post, repeatedly. There didn't seem to be a patch of skin that didn't have blood or other wounds and Paulie wondered how the guy wasn't dead yet.

By the time he was done the guy's entire torso was wrapped in white strips of cloth, his arms where patchwork of skin and bandages, and his legs from the knees down to his ankles were wrapped fully. Paulie pulled away from the last bandage, a new white addition tucked between the guy's orange hair and forehead, and sat back on his haunches.

His glanced at the guy's face, and took note that even though his face was still marred with pain, it wasn't so intense as before and he counted that as a good thing.

Something suddenly crashed against the steel door of the small apartment and Paulie shot up startled and whirled around to face it. His eyes blew wide at the sight of a indent, the size of almost a fourth the door, concaving towards him. He nervously took a step back before shaking his head. Reinforcing himself before glancing back down to the guy, rechecking that he was asleep before darting down the hallway of the apartment, leading to a little bedroom at the end. He entered it and found it incredibly bare, uncaring he went to the window of the bedroom and inspected it's sealing.

The wood was nailed tightly, and he peeked into the hole the wood provided and saw a layer of steel welded to the window frame. Moving on he checked the walls and ceiling for any cracks or damages similar to the steel door. Finding none he nodded to himself and turned back around. Running back to where the orange haired man laid.

The unnamed man was still out cold, and Paulie was slightly thankful for it. He bent down and carefully maneuvered the guy sliding him as carefully as he could onto the ground and starting to pull him as gently as he could to the little room.

He wouldn't drag the guy if he could help it, but as he had discovered while supporting the guy all the way to the apartment, he weighed so much Paulie had been hard pressed not to buckle under his weight.

Getting into the room wasn't too hard, he tossed a pillow onto the floor and made a point to support the guy's head with it before closing the bedroom door and sliding everything in the room in front of it.

It wouldn't help much against Aqua Laguna but it could at least slow the water down a little bit. At least enough for him to kick the window out if they needed it.

He plopped down next the the unconscious man and sighed, rubbing his fingers against his lips, craving a nicotine stick to help his nerves. But the packet he stored them in was sitting in the foreman rooms at the shelter, he'd left them there after lighting one up, as precaution to not let them be ruined by Aqua Laguna... it would have been a waste of money he really didn't have.

He ran his hand through his slowly drying hair and glanced down to the unconscious male beside him. Watching as the orange haired man's chest slowly rose and fell, and how his eyes occasionally twitches behind his eyelids.

He didn't know why but he suddenly found himself leaning closer toward the man's face and inhaling deeply. The other's scent hit his nose and he jolted sharply.

He smelt like... amber and pumpkin spice, hazelnuts.. it was... alluring and almost seemed to draw him in. He didn't miss the sharp scent of the scent of an alpha though and he reeled back at it. It wasn't off-putting, he just hadn't been trying to smell the others dynamic or scent for that matter. The scent of the alpha bring him back to his scenes and he leaned back away from the other.

He suddenly felt very embarrassed at undressing the other. He had done it with the best intentions and to try and help the other..but still.. the thought that he had practically bared someone else of another different dynamic than his own was embarrassing to him and he felt himself hunch over his raised legs, hiding his face in his knees.

He stated that way for a few minutes before opening his eyes, his cheeks burning. It was a few for minutes before the silence started to become suffocating and he huffed. He shifted his body weight and leaned against the wall next to the...alph-stranger. He couldn't go to sleep, not with Aqua Laguna raging outside, but he was tired.

Running around Water 7 all day would do that to a person.

It wasn't long before he dozed off.


	3. 3) No Light

3.) No Light

——(xXx)——

Everything hurt.

He was disoriented. He was hurting.

He didn't know what was going on or what was happening.

He groaned as he forced his eyes open. The wall was blurry and his vision wavered several times. He gasped in pain as he forced himself to move, forcing himself to sit up, his body protesting every slight shift on the process.

He felt familiar slight pulls and restrictions on his body and tried but failed to make the connection of what that meant.

His head felt like cotton and he couldn't make coherent thoughts and couldn't summon up the memory of what got him into this clouded, vaguely there state.

But one thing cut through all the cloudy fog and he found himself whining deep in his throat as it distracted him from the pain.

It was a smell. He leaned towards its source and was met with something hard but soft at the same time. He nuzzled his head into the curve it possessed and breathed out. It was enchanting. A scent of the sea and the smell of oak wood and the ocean filled his head, and he sighed in slight content. It was alluring and it thankfully distracted him from the pain that wracked his body.

He felt the force he was leaning against tense and stutter and he heard something in the background, a voice maybe, but he wasn't sure.

He breathed out again and he started to feel his body going lax. His hand came up and gripped the thing he was holding onto and groaned. His eyebrows furrowed and he went completely limp, fading into darkness.


End file.
